Wyzga On Words

A March In Manhattan & A Trek Across The Gobi Desert: What Do They Have In Common?

I'm a big believer in "timing & location" being applicable to more situations than real estate.  Helen Thayer has been pulling off explorer-naturalist excursions for decades and only a few weeks ago did I hear her name. She was being interviewed on NPR prior to a speaking engagement in San Diego.  What caught my ear was her plans for an upcoming trek with her husband, Bill: 1500 miles across India to study the culture.  Never mind that Bill is 82 and Helen is 71. She was 63 and he was 74 when they walked across the Gobi Desert: 1,600 miles in 80 days with temperatures often topping 110 degrees.

"Walking the Gobi" is part thriller, part adventure story, part feat of endurance.  And a very early call about the disastrous effects of climate chaos/global warming. Remember that Thayer walked in 2001.  She published her book in 2007. Back when she and Bill were making their way west to east across a forbidding landscape, Mongolian nomads who make their homes here, raise their children, raise herds and flocks of sheep and goats, had been telling her there had been no rain in three years.  Mongolians date to at least Genghis Kahn.  These people are desert nomads. They know the climate of their home.

You might wonder why a desert needs rain.  Green things grow in the desert.  Animals adapted to this ferocious life find sources of water and forage.  As do people.  When there is no rain and winds kick up to 50, 60 , 70 more miles per hour, huge sandstorms fill the sky and carry beyond borders.  The natural equilibrium of the desert is thrown off balance and everyone suffers.

Believing that grass roots efforts are what really get things done, thousands of men and women and children met up in Manhattan on Sunday to march for correcting climate chaos.  As reported in the NYTimes, Taking a Call for Climate Change to the Streets, legions of marchers with no more affiliation than this one shared planet demonstrated that the time had come for ordinary people to turn things around. Marches were also held all over the world as ordinary people on every continent realized that the heating up of Planet Earth is not some joke of the scientific community.

I am gearing up for a pre-trial legal research, otherwise known as a focus group.  As one of a series of political compass questions I am posting to the potential participants, there is this one: "Is climate chaos/global warming some error of science or a real disaster in the making?"  To my astonishment, well over half of those being recruited in SoCal call it a scientific error. Here in California we are looking at Year 3 of a record drought. At a time when other folks are getting ready to don wool socks and prepare soup for dinner, we are reeling from weeks of triple digit temperatures. As reported in the NYTimes:

Last week, meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that this summer — the months of June, July and August — was the hottest on record for the globe, and that 2014 was on track to break the record for the hottest year, set in 2010.

It was concern about the consequences of that warming that drew people to the march, organized by a dozen environmental, labor and social justice groups, and that inspired some of the event’s most sober and most outrageous expressions, some of them not even on the route.

Whether you are two elderly foreigners leading camels across the Gobi or one of many marching in Manhattan or your corner of the globe, the message is still the same: this is real - do what you can with what you have.  There is no Plan-et B.  

 

Wednesday's Child Is Full Of Woe.

Maybe you've heard this old nursery rhyme:

"Monday's Child is full of grace.

Tuesday's Child is fair of face.

Wednesday's Child is full of woe.

Thursday's Child has far to go.

Friday's Child is loving and giving.

Saturday's Child must work for a living.

But the Child that's born on the Sabbath day is kind and loving and good and gay."

Guess which child I was. Yup - I'm a Wednesday.  The only Wednesday in the family.  Growing up I was reminded over and over again.  A problem with hearing a message like that is you can adopt it for no better reason than its repetitiveness.

Of late and because the days have been so dark and deep I've been wondering: Is this a time of woe to which I have some birthright as a Wednesday Child?  Am I truly woebegone (like a certain Lake of radio lore)?  Or could it be that some great blessing might be attached to this time?  Maybe even a miracle.  But how to know?

Perhaps strangers know you best.  And welcome you best of all.  Last year I was walking, hiking, trekking and slogging my way for 5 weeks & 500 miles on the Camino de Santiago.  I knew woe well.  One evening after the pilgrims' dinner a hospitelera held my weather-beaten face in her cupped hands, looked deep into my eyes and offered me this prayer: "May you find what you're looking for, peregrina, even if you don't know what it is." What a kind, heartfelt blessing that was, life-giving and lasting.

As gifts would also have it last night I was re-reading a favorite book: Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead. On page 55 is this passage by the pastor ruminating on days gone by:

"I could have married again while I was still young. A congregation likes to have a married minister, and I was introduced to every niece and sister-in-law in a hundred miles.  In retrospect, I'm very grateful for whatever reluctance it was that kept me alone until your mother came. Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing.  So I am right to remember it as a blessed time, and myself as waiting in confidence, even if I had no idea what I was waiting for."

I can't say if he was a Wednesday Child or not.  I can say I do recognize a fellow pilgrim on the road we call Life which, in its journeying can disappoint us as easily as charm. Savoring the passage I had just read as if it were written for me alone I chose to re-write the nursery line this way: "Wednesday's Child is full of wondering & wandering."  I choose to believe that this time is one of waiting in confidence, even if I have no idea what I am waiting for. It's a matter of trust that my life will be delivered.

What about you?  Which child are you and how has that served you?

 

 

 

 

 

Give Your Characters Shadow Sides.

Silas House writing for the NYTimes in an essay entitled, Tell Their Secrets, wants to know what brings your characters to life.  For us to remember them - for them to endear themselves to us - they must be as multi-faceted and flawed as we are.

Helen Hunt Jackson said, "If you want people to read the truth, write fiction."

I think what she meant is that art imitates life.  And the better you are at writing what life is all about, the more truthful it will appear in your work.

A written work is carried on the backs of its characters.   Take, for example, Jackson's best known work, Ramona: 

"One of the greatest ethical novels of the nineteenth century, this is a tale of true love tested. Set in Old California, this powerful narrative richly depicts the life of the fading Spanish order, the oppression of tribal American communities and inevitably, the brutal intrusion of white settlers. Ramona, an illegitimate orphan, grows up as the ward of the overbearing Senora Moreno. But her desire for Alessandro, a Native American, makes her an outcast and fugitive..."

But as luscious as Ramona sounds, she is as flat as a tortilla: sunny, good-natured, cheerful, resilient, sweet, abiding, and so on.  She bears up with the events that befall her after having chosen to fall in love and run away with someone who is "not of her house."  Flat.

Ramona's step-mother, Senora Moreno, fares much better as an arch-villainess.  You can feel her squirmy, sadistic, scheming ways.  The reader loves to hate her.  Her son, Senor Felipe, wishes he could man-up and do the right thing by his adopted sister who has chosen to run off with the Indian Allessandro, but under the thumb of hs controlling mother he can do little more than drain out of every confrontation as if he were water wrung out of a damp linen suit.  Still, you get the feel of him as a frightened, fearful fellow with the heart of a do-gooder.   

Characters must be flawed.  And they must do the unexpected.  Through them we get to try on the many masks of humanity as we struggle and celebrate our pilgrim lives. 

Q&A Tuesday: How Do You Become A Writer? Read & Write.

Q:    How do you become a writer?

A:    You read books.  You act like a writer by writing.

One the one hand I am posting an article by and an interview with Molly Ringwald for my brother who found her then as now heart-thumpingly, breathtakingly stunning.

On the other hand I am writing this post because it has valuable tips on how to write.

Start here: click here to read John Williams interview with Ringwald on the subject of her newest novel, "When It Happens To You."  Highlights:

1. Writing and acting require an ability to understand a character.
2. Our human flaws make us human and create the good/evil duality.
3. Universal values speak to all of us.
4. While mothering may give a writer an edge on parenthood, note all the successful authors who never personally experienced their characters' lives.
5. Which writers have influenced you?

Then, click here to read Ringwald's Opinion piece, Act Like a Writer, with tips and exercises on finding and developing your character.  Excerpt.

"Our job, as the cast [of The Breakfast Club], was to find the humanity in the stereotypes that we had been assigned, to show that we were all suffering in our own way and searching for our way out. In the end, that way out is through connection, another lesson I’ve carried through my life and in what I have chosen to explore in fiction."

 

Making Money Isn't So Hard.

 

“Making money isn’t hard in itself.  What’s hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to.”  [The Shadow of the Wind.]

I came across these lines written in a journal I've been keeping to track 365 days of small steps I am taking toward my next dream. They remind me that we must have whole-hearted affection for what we do; or our efforts at work will be exhausting.

To what are you devoting your life?  For what do you have affection? 

Books and language are my livelihood.  You never know what you will find when you turn the page.  Excerpt.

The Shadow of the Wind is a coming-of-age tale of a young boy who, through the magic of a single book, finds a purpose greater than himself and a hero in a man he's never met. With the passion of García Márquez, the irony of Dickens, and the necromancy of Poe, Carlos Ruiz Zafón spins a web of intrigue so thick that it ensnares the reader from the very first line. The Shadow of the Wind is an ode to the art of reading, but it is also the perfect example of the all-encompassing power of a well-told story.  Click here to read more.

Grimms' Fairy Tales Can Be Pretty Grim. What's The Lure Of The Fairy Tale?

Joan Acocella's book review article for The New Yorker, July 23, 2012, "Once Upon A Time - The Lure of the Fairy Tale," begins with a troubling Grimms tale called "The Stubborn Child."  Excerpt. 

"Once upon a time there was a stubborn child who never did what his mother told him to do. The dear Lord, therefore, did not look kindly upon him, and let him become sick. No doctor could cure him and in a short time he lay on his deathbed. After he was lowered into his grave and covered over with earth, one of his little arms suddenly emerged and reached up into the air. They pushed it back down and covered the earth with fresh earth, but that did not help. The little arm kept popping out. So the child’s mother had to go to the grave herself and smack the little arm with a switch. After she had done that, the arm withdrew, and then, for the first time, the child had peace beneath the earth."

With this grim opener Acocella takes us on a journey of deep, dark, cruel, violent, and downright frightening fairy tales as constructed by the Grimms' Brothers which, some might argue could actually be good for children and helpful to us.  Excerpt.

"This story, with its unvarnished prose, should be clear, but it isn’t. Was the child buried alive? The unconsenting arm looks more like a symbol. And what about the mother? Didn’t it trouble her to whip that arm? Then we are told that the youngster, after this beating, rested in peace. Really? When, before, he had seemed to beg for life? But the worst thing in the story is that, beyond disobedience, it gives us not a single piece of information about the child. No name, no age, no pretty or ugly. We don’t even know if it is a boy or a girl. (The Grimms used ein Kind, the neuter word for “child.” Zipes decided that the child was a boy.) And so the tale, without details to attach it to anything in particular, becomes universal. Whatever happened there, we all deserve it. A. S. Byatt has written that this is the real terror of the story: “It doesn’t feel like a warning to naughty infants. It feels like a glimpse of the dreadful side of the nature of things.” That is true of very many of the Grimms’ tales, even those with happy endings."

Is this the hook?  The universal message is both alluring and terrorizing.

Following along the wooded path of Acocella's work you will become engaged in folklore research, creative thought, versions of fairy tales, opposing viewpoints, reasoned proposals to revise the tales, and the ongoing mysteries of literary criticism.

It makes a great read; perhaps not just before you go to sleep.

Maurice Sendak Is Where The Wild Things Are.

By now you've learned about the recent passing of Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator.

But maybe you haven't read this memoriam, "Thanks, Maurice," by Steven Heller.  Sendak spooked many of us; and, come to find out that wasn't so bad.  Excerpt.

"Maurice Sendak’s 1963 “Where the Wild Things Are” unlocked a scary, psychologically nuanced, inner world long taboo in mainstream children’s books. Mr. Sendak once told me that King Kong was a great character and had influenced him when he created “Wild Things.”

“You’re supposed to be frightened of these things. Kids need Kongs to help them conquer their anxiety,” he said."

Make sure you check out the slide show to see and read about Sendak's universal influence.

Anne Lamott Has Words For Writers & Lawyers.

I am a card-carrying member of the Anne Lamott fan club.

No question about it.

I have been insanely intimate with her books: Traveling Mercies, Bird By Bird, Plan B, and Rosie, among others.  The margins are filled with notes, the words are underlined and re-underlined.  I, like so many others, are convinced that Lamott wrote a particular book just for the reader. 

Something Lamott said rings true for all writers, and especially for lawyers who write their opening statement or closing argument but so rarely read what they've written aloud.  There's a big difference hearing with the ear:

"Nothing can break the mood of a piece of writing like bad dialogue. My students are miserable when they are reading an otherwise terrific story to the class and then hit a patch of dialogue that is so purple and expositional that it reads like something from a childhood play by the Gabor sisters. ... I can see the surprise on my students' faces, because the dialogue looked okay on paper, yet now it sounds as if it were poorly translated from their native Hindi."

TIP:     Any time you have something to say aloud, speak out loud what you've written to hear how it sounds before you have to stand and deliver your words to the decision-maker or listener.

We Stand On The Shoulders Of Others. Thank You, Kathy Hansen.

I would like to take a moment to thank with deep gratitude, Kathy Hansen for all she did to bring my words to light & life in her wonderful story blog: A Storied Career.

Click here to access a fully archived version of our Q&A Interview. 

While you are there take some time to poke around in the plethora of story resources and delights! 

You may also wish to follow Kathy on her personal Twitter site: @kathansen, as well as her professional site: @AStoriedCareer.

A Plethora Of Story Influences.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Click here for Question #5.